I reviewed Criterion's superb DVD release of this film earlier this year elsewhere, but I love it so that I want to touch upon it again here. A delightfully barbed comedy of manners, Whit Stillman’s witty, literate Metropolitan is an undeniable high point of independent ‘90s cinema, one of those movies I made a note — both mental and literal — to track down on DVD when it finally saw release on the format. A pleasure, then, that Criterion spearheaded the release with such a fine eye and attention to detail, resulting in a fitting and long overdue celebration of this 1990 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.

A talky and purposefully ostentatious vivisection of the particular ennui of well-to-do youth, the film is set in New York City during a Christmastime break of “not too long ago,” a hectic time that for our young ensemble occasions all sorts of gala soirees at which they must make appearances. With a “severe escort shortage,” scene newbie Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) is drafted into action, joining, among others, sharp-as-a-tack Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman), politico-in-training Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols), sensual Cynthia McLean (Isabel Gillies) and the ostensible Molly Ringwald of the group — a bit pretty, a bit dowdy — Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina). All sorts of various crushes and cross-crushes exist, but the potentially jejune is heavily counterbalanced with banter-filled talk of art, politics, social criticism, activism and literature. Psychological perspicacity, meanwhile, is achieved through the manner in which almost all the characters put on small fronts over the course of the movie, and then betray those in various, telling ways.

Stillman has described the script as “finishing started arguments that I lost,” and that truth lends Metropolitan the weighted plausibility of to-scale conflict. The audience feels invested in the silly problems of its subjects because Stillman captures the particular fashion in which adolescents and twentysomethings invest considerable psychological energy in group mores and rules, and the highly punishable cost of breaking them. The result is a highbrow film of, still, exceeding pleasure; you literally bask in the all the glories and inanities of its oratorical circle-eights, with Eigeman and Will Kempe — as the smarmy Rick Von Sloneker, a young baron — in particular stealing the show. If the latter day films of director Wes Anderson mean anything to you, check out their roots in Metropolitan, a gem of contemplation trumping limited means.